


Game of Husbands

by mrstater



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Downton Abbey
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crack, Companionable Snark, F/M, Jousting, Marriage of Convenience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-17
Updated: 2013-04-17
Packaged: 2017-12-08 19:27:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrstater/pseuds/mrstater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Which high lord of Westeros will play Lady Mary of House Grantham's game?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Game of Husbands

When her lord father told his three daughters they would travel down from the North for a tournament in Lannisport, Mary passed the long journey in the wheelhouse with her lady mother, grandmother, and sisters, pretending not to care about their speculations about which knights and lordlings would beg their favors to wear into the lists.

“What need have I for a husband?” Mary asked. “It seems unlikely Mother should give Father a son so late in life—” She felt a little pang as Lady Cora glanced away, blue eyes brightening with a sorrowful expression. “—and he may choose to name me heir to House Grantham.” 

“But what if Prince Rhaegar is smitten by your beauty?” asked Sybil, snuggling against Mary beneath the fur they shared for warmth.

Mary could not feign coolness at that. “Of course I’d give up being Lady of Downton to be Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, sweetling.”

“Except rumor has it Prince Rhaegar’s betrothal is to be announced at the tourney,” said Edith.

“Jaime Lannister then,” suggested Sybil, her enthusiasm not dampened. “Imagine the beautiful blond babies you might have.”

“Ugh, I care little for babies,” Mary said, “but I would not mind having the Lannister gold at my disposal.”

“What about his shrew of a twin for your gods-sister?” Edith said.

Mary tossed her head. “Lady Cersei could hardly be worse than my shrew of a true sister.”

“Girls!” cried Lady Cora. “You’d best leave your bickering in this wheelhouse, or no man will consider you for his lady wife. And Mary, you _know_ your father is like to name your cousin Ser Matthew Crawley his heir. Robert could love no son more dearly than he loves him.”

 _Nor any daughter_ , Mary thought bitterly.

“Mayhaps Ser Cousin will beg your favor, and make you Lady Grantham,” said Edith, pulling a dreadful face.

“Mary should not have to wed to inherit what is hers by rights,” Sybil leapt to her defense. “If we were Dornish, she would not have to.”

“But we are not Dornish,” Mary said.

“Thank the gods we are not,” her grandmother Lady Violet spoke for the first time; Mary had thought her to be napping. “That spicy Dornish food. How they are not in a state of perpetual indigestion is beyond me.”

 Mary shoved the furs aside and pushed to her feet. “I should like to ride,” she said, and leapt down from the lumbering wheelhouse.

~*~

“Do you not find the tournament diverting, my lady?”

The low rasping voice drew Mary’s attention from the joust between Ser Evelyn of House Napier and a knight of some minor house whose purple unicorn sigil she could not be bothered to remember. She had left her seat because the insipid chatter of the other ladies made her feel murderous; her annoyance at being interrupted from her sulk vanished when she recognized the man who had done so.

“Lord Carlisle,” she said, making him a slight curtsey, which he waved off as though such formalities made him uncomfortable; Richard Carlisle was of common birth, she remembered, the son of nobody of house nothing. “To what do I owe the honor of the Master of Whisperer’s company?”

“To what does anyone owe it? As always, my curiosity is aroused by the unusual.”

“Gods be good,” Mary said, “I hope you haven’t sniffed out any of my secrets.”

“Not as yet, though believe me, I shall do my utmost.” 

She returned her eyes to the lists, but his shrewd ones lingered on her face as she watched Ser Matthew Crawley ride against one of Lord Leyton Hightower’s sons, who handily unhorsed him.

“At last, a smile graces the lips of Lady Mary of House Grantham,” said Lord Carlisle, and she looked up at him again to see him smirking.

The insolence of the expression—technically he was above her, since the Mad King raised him up to power, but that did not change the truth that he was lowborn—ought to have galled her, but she noticed on his smooth shaven face dimples beneath his high cheekbones. No commoner should have bone structure like that. Perhaps he was some high lord’s bastard? Feeling the heat burn on her face she hastily averted her gaze, biting the inside of her cheek.

Lord Carlisle talked on as though unaware—or unconcerned—by her discomfiture. “You know at first I thought you’d left the stands because the violence of the joust made you ill, as it does so many great but delicate ladies.”

Mary could not conceal a snort at the utter preposterousness of such a notion.

“Now I see the opposite is true,” he said. “You wished not to have to conceal your taste for blood.”

Her smile fell as she realized Ser Matthew was, indeed, bleeding from where the Hightower—Baelor, she saw as he pulled off his helm, Lord Leyton’s heir—had caught him exactly in one of the chinks in his armor.

“ _His_ blood,” she murmured.

Lord Carlisle nodded slowly, as though he understood perfectly. “Ser Matthew will inherit your father’s seat and title, I think?”

“That seems trivial knowledge for so lofty a man as Master of Whispers.”

Mary had meant to mock him to hide her surprise that he had seen through her so easily, but he was vulgar enough to seem to take it as a compliment, his dimples deepening. “I know everything that goes on in these kingdoms.”

“He’s only a distant cousin. A tradesman, before his knighthood.”

“And you are Lord Grantham’s firstborn child. Little wonder you look as though you should like to unseat him yourself.”

“ _I_ would not be so easily unseated.”

Lord Carlisle’s eyes swept over her, lingering at the Myrish lace bodice of her crimson gown. Mary made herself continue to look steadily at him, though she felt he was peering inside her as though every secret part of her body or worse, every secret held in her heart, were laid bare before him. Including the one that seemed so foolish now, of having selected a gown that either Prince Rhaegar might take to represent the fire and blood of House Targaryen or Lord Jaime for Lannister red.

“And would you go sidesaddle, as a lady,” Lord Carlisle asked, “or astride?”

Mary’s eyes widened. If she was not mistaken, the Master of Whispers was being _lewd_. And rather than do the maidenly thing and blush and look away, pretending not to understand, she found her own gaze raking over him, noting how well the embroidered robes of his office fitted his trim figure. His broad shoulders and the muscled planes of his chest seemed more befitting Lord Commander of the Kingsguard than Lord of Spies—though Mary supposed the latter had the advantage of not being made to swear vows of celibacy. At that thought, her gaze _did_ falter, though the heat burned deep in her belly and not in her face.

Clearing his throat, Lord Carlisle said as they watched her fellow Northman, the hulking Lord of Bear Island ride hard toward Jaime Lannister, “I mean to say, if you could ride as a tourney knight, my lady, whose favor would you seek?”

“Why, mine own. I would ride for my birthright.”

“Do you not aspire to greater heights than to sit at Downton, and serve as bannerwoman at a higher lord’s pleasure?”

The crowd roared with amazement as Jaime Lannister’s lance shattered against Ser Jorah Mormont’s.

“Before today I might have said Lord Tywin’s heir,” Mary replied, Lord Carlisle inclining his head toward her so as better to hear her above the thunder of hooves as the jousters barreled toward each other for a second time. “But if he is unseated by so lowborn a lord as a Mormont of Bear Island…”

“Perhaps you might choose Ser Jorah then,” said Lord Carlisle, smirking again.

“He could not keep me in the manner to which I am accustomed,” Mary said with a snort, the jewels in her ears jingling with the toss of her head.

Lord Carlisle chuckled, his face registering no reaction as Jaime and Ser Jorah broke another pair of lances and kept their saddles. “It’s just as well about Jaime. I hear whisperings that he’d like to go the way of the Targaryens.”

Mary’s brows knit at this. “Do you mean Lord Tywin’s son prefers men?”

“Blood kin.”

Her eyes snapped to the Lannister pavilion, where Lady Cersei watched her twin joust anxiously, her hands curled into fists so tight her fingernails must draw blood from her palms. But Cersei loved Prince Rhaegar, did she not?

“I’d like to be Queen,” Mary told Lord Carlisle.

“ _Mmm,_ but the crown will go to Elia of Dorne. Best set your sights a _little_ lower.”

“Lady Hand, then,” she teased. “Do you think I could turn Lord Twyin’s head, after all these years faithful to Lady Joanna’s memory?”

“No. He’s thrice your age, anyway.” Lord Carlisle looked down at her. “But what about Mistress of Whisperers?”

The noise of the crowd had risen to an even higher pitch as the Bear and the Lion of Lannister broke still a third pair of lances, but Mary scarcely heard it as the blood thundered in her own head with the realization that he was in earnest.

“Is that a proposal, my lord? If so, I think you underestimate my ambition. You may be a Lord, but you are entitled to no lands—”

“And I think you underestimate mine.” Lord Carlisle took her hands, his grip firm, the pads of his fingertips and palms rough. She liked that. Liked him. “I think we can build something worth having, Lady Mary—if you’ll let us.”


End file.
